


Play It Again, Sam

by TreacleTeacups



Series: Drabbles n Oneshots [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (not really) - Freeform, .... professor kink?, 6th year, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempts at humour, Fix-It, Gaslighting, M/M, Nonsense, Pre-Slash, Professor Tom Riddle, and an uncharacteristicaally utopian Tom Riddle, but all in good fun, ft Harry refocusing his 6th year obsession with Draco on Tom, idk guys work with me here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28893480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreacleTeacups/pseuds/TreacleTeacups
Summary: Harry freezes, eyes wide. He blinks. He takes off his glasses, cleans them, and puts them back on. Apparently, he is actually seeing what he thought he was seeing.Harry feels the world slow around him.Tom bloody Riddle sits smugly at the Head Table, comfortably relaxed between a loudly talking Hagrid and little Flitwick as he delicately sips from a goblet.A constantly changing timeline, a sane Dark Lord, and Tom Riddle as the publically beloved Defence Professor.uhm, what now?
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Drabbles n Oneshots [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859008
Comments: 20
Kudos: 285
Collections: Tomarry 💜





	Play It Again, Sam

**Harry juts his jaw** as he stomps through the Great Hall, gnashing his teeth as the entirety of the school turns to watch his late entry. Once again, Harry has unfortunately made a spectacle of himself. Perfect. Just. _Perfect_.

Harry throws himself into the seat beside Hermione and Ron, ignoring their fluttering concern, and he sends Malfoy a dark glare. The blond was clearly re-enacting breaking Harry’s nose, as a peal of cruel laughter rippled across the Slytherin table.

Prat.

“Well, at least the new Defence professor seems competent,” Harry heard Hermione say, catching the tail end of a conversation.

Harry turns in his seat, expecting to see Slughorn sitting in Moody’s old place _(he refuses to call it Umbridge’s chair, because last year didn’t happen, nope_ ) –

Harry freezes, eyes wide. He blinks. He takes off his glasses, cleans them, and puts them back on. Apparently, he is actually seeing what he thought he was seeing.

Harry feels the world slow around him.

Tom _bloody_ Riddle sits smugly at the Head Table, comfortably relaxed between a loudly talking Hagrid and little Flitwick as he delicately sips from a goblet.

Harry gapes. His eyes flicker to Dumbledore, who looks nothing other than his usual merry self. Snape is awfully dour looking, but wasn’t he always? Harry jerked his head to look at Ginny, heart thumping in his chest, but the girl was busily recounting her summer with one of her fifth-year peers and paying the slightly older version of Diary-Tom Riddle not one iota of attention.

Did – did no one see what he saw? Harry turned back to Voldemort, heart in his throat. The bastard’s smug, slate grey eyes bore directly into Harry’s and he raises his goblet in salute. The unspoken word is clear: _checkmate_.

Harry realises in that moment that something has gone terribly, horrifically wrong.

* * *

“But I’m telling you, Hermione!” Harry hissed, “That’s Voldemort! Come on Ron, surely you remember? The bloody Chamber of Secrets reopening? Ginny almost dying? Anything?” Harry was beginning to get desperate.

“Mate, I don’t know what you’re on about,” Ron said, frowning at his hysterical friend.

“Dumbledore would never let _Voldemort_ teach at Hogwarts,” Hermione added, eyebrows drawing together.

“He already has!” Harry snapped, “Does the name Quirrell mean nothing to you?”

Ron and Hermione sent Harry quizzical looks. “What does Quirrell have to do with anything?” Hermione asked, looking at Harry as if he were a madman.

Harry wasn’t quite able to fully suppress a scream of frustration and he stomped to his bed, deciding that whatever hell had befallen him would be resolved by the morning.

* * *

The situation did not get better. In fact, it was as if the entirety of the school had descended into complete and utter madness. Harry had already spoken to Dumbledore the night of the opening feast; the man knew nothing about what Harry was trying to say. Part of Harry suspects memory tampering and he wishes so desperately that he was competent at Legimency.

It was only from Hermione’s coercion and Ron’s increasingly worried expressions that Harry lets himself get bullied into attending DADA. As compromise for being practically herded into Voldemort’s vicinity, Harry settled for sitting at the very back of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and sending Voldemort scathing looks.

“Stop that, Harry,” Hermione frets quietly beside him. “If you keep throwing him filthy looks, you’ll end up on his bad side before the end of the first day!”

Harry looked at Hermione out of the corner of his eye, keeping his focus on _“Professor Riddle”_. “Honestly, Hermione,” Harry said slowly, as if one were speaking to a dim-witted child, “I don’t think it is possible to get any further onto Voldemort’s ‘bad side’ than I currently am.”

Hermione made a noise of helpless exasperation and threw up her hands in defeat. 

* * *

It’s gone too far.

On a Saturday eve, Harry stepped onto the sixth-floor landing and ran into Cedric pashing Cho behind a suit of armour.

He wasn’t proud of the scream he released, high pitched as it was, but it really wasn’t his fault.

* * *

“This is not funny,” Harry growls angrily.

Voldemort turns lightly on his heels, looking down his nose at Harry with an eyebrow arched in faux confusion.

“Mr. Potter,” ‘Professor Riddle’ purrs, gaze growing sultry and expression the textbook description of _cat who caught the canary._ “Whatever do you mean?”

“Fuck you,” Harry snaps.

“Language,” Riddle tuts, velveteen.

“Harry _,_ ” Hermione cries, looking close to bursting into tears at the idea of Harry _swearing at a professor._

“I’m fucking _onto you,_ ” Harry snarls, pointing his finger at Riddle warningly.

“How delightful,” Riddle replies indulgently, as if the idea was indeed delightful.

Harry releases a degraded noise of rage and he flees. 

* * *

If having the seemingly twenty-year-old visage of Tom Riddle gliding smugly through the halls of Hogwarts wasn’t quite enough stress on Harry, then it was convenient that things began to get increasingly bizarre for Harry Potter.

On Harry’s way back from Quidditch practice, alone for the first time in weeks, Harry flinches as he hears a very familiar voice whispering through the hall.

_Hungry, so very hungry, food food food–_

Harry’s mouth dropped open, feet rooting to the ground.

Was that – No, it couldn’t be. Could it? Did the _basilisk_ come back to life? Was there a _new_ one?

Harry would check the Chamber of Secrets himself, but he’s already fought a basilisk once and won; he does not think the odds would be in his favour if he attempted it again.

Harry sprints the entire way to Dumbledore’s office and is rewarded with Dumbledore giving Harry a rather concerned look ( _somehow the blackened flesh of his left hand now miraculously healed)_ and sending Harry to the Hospital Wing.

As he sits on a cot in the Hospital Wing, sipping a calming potion, Harry realises he is losing his mind. He knows that the things that he sees are not right, that everyone else but him is apparently under some kind of massive delusion causing false memories.

But being the only one with the knowledge that things aren’t how they should be is too much to bear. Well, that is not entirely true – Tom Riddle clearly knows perfectly well what he’s doing and if he sends Harry one more dark smirk as if they are sharing an excellent inside joke, Harry Potter is going to discover what the consequences are for murdering a Hogwarts professor seemingly unprovoked.

* * *

“Mr. Potter,” Professor Riddle drawls, the lush baritone timbre of his voice raising the hairs on Harry’s arm. “Won’t you join our little informal milieu? I’m sure the guests of my soirée would be simply ecstatic to have your company.”

Harry glares at Professor Riddle in the doorway and then lets his eyes flicker behind the tall man, catching a peek of what appeared to be some kind of self-congratulatory student get-together in the DADA classroom after school hours (Harry sees Riddle’s Fanclub is doing a fantastic job once more of drooling over the young professor). Harry nearly bites his bottom lip off when he notices a frozen Hermione, staring at him with wide eyes over a tiny quiche in her hand, caught in the act. _Betrayal_.

“I’ve got an idea: why don’t you shove your _informal mil –_ ” Harry starts before Ron claps a hand over Harry’s mouth and drags him to the Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

“Harry, where are you going?” Hermione asks, gently catching the young man’s wrist in her hand as he walks through the common room.

Harry looks down at Hermione, confused. She’s in her pajamas at eight thirty in the morning on a Friday. It is unprecedented. “What are _you_ doing?” Harry counters, bewildered. “Aren’t you going to class?”

“It’s Memorial Day,” Hermione replies, just as bewildered as Harry. “We don’t have class.”

“Memorial Day?” Harry repeats, flabbergasted, feeling the emotional equivalent of thinking that there was one more step on a staircase except there wasn’t and his foot has landed awkwardly at the top. He looks around and, sure enough, the common room is slowly filling with students in their pajamas, not getting ready for the day.

“Yeah,” Ron says. Harry turns, realising he hadn’t seen his friend either on his walk through the common room. “Don’t you remember? The day the wizarding war ended?” Ron looks apprehensive, as if worried Harry will burst into another tangent about how the timeline is being altered and that Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort.

“Oh,” Harry says. “Of course. Just slipped my mind.”

Hermione and Ron relax, exhaling in relief as one.

“That is, if _Memorial Day ever existed,_ ” Harry growls, ramping up for another lecture.

Ron and Hermione groan.

* * *

“You’re a right prick,” Harry says, rubbing his forehead. Of all the bizarre changes, of all the weirdness and time alterations and nonsense, Harry’s scar has not changed. His parents have not come back to life. His godfather is still dead and he still has to go back to the Dursleys for the summer. Whereas everything else seems to have been just slightly shifted, one step left of normal, Harry has remained exactly the same. It is practically rubbing salt in the wounds, at this point.

“I can’t possibly imagine why,” Riddle answers sweetly, filing his nails. Harry has burst into his office on the last day of school, ready to curse Riddle to kingdom come.

“Oh, _really_?” Harry questions dryly. “No clue? Not an inkling? Just a quick question, how is it that you’ve gotten permission to rename the Slytherin Quidditch team _Death Eaters_ and no one has protested one iota?”

“It _is_ a good name, it would be such a shame to let it go to waste,” Riddle replies smugly, tone practically crushed velvet.

“And that Grindelwald and Dumbledore are happily married and run the school as a couple?” Harry presses.

“Are you being homophobic, Mr. Potter? That is hardly modern of you,” Riddle tuts.

“ _Homopho_ – listen here, you tall, dark and stormy terrorist,” Harry seethed, “I’ll figure out exactly what you’ve fucking done and I will destroy you.”

“But isn’t it better?” Riddle asks suddenly, setting down his file.

Harry stops. Blinks. Riddle is staring at him blankly with no snarky-smug expression. No smirk. No twinkle in his eyes that makes Harry want to rip those passionate grey irises out with his bare hands.

“Better?” Harry repeats dumbly, surprised by the sudden weighty clarity of Riddle’s stare.

“Yes, better. There was not much I could do about your life. I don’t know why, but it won’t let me,” Riddle said, pulling a cracked time-turner out from under his robes. He runs a finger down the side of the crack. “Perhaps your destiny is set in stone. But it lets me alter just about everything else.”

Harry is stumped. Was this new alternate universe _better_? Well… He’d never really thought about it like that. Harry takes stock of everything that has happened in the last year. People have miraculously returned from the dead with no memory of being murdered, the wizarding world is apparently thriving fantastically, _somehow muggles know about wizards and are at peace with it,_ and the basilisk hasn’t killed anyone.

“Also,” Riddle says, lips curling into a dark smirk, “Did you just call me ‘tall, dark and stormy,’ Mr. Potter?”

Screw Gryffindor bravery; Harry runs.


End file.
